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Many popularly held views about the past need to be critically enquired into before they can be taken as historical. For instance, what was the aftermath of the raid on the Somanatha temple? Which of us is Aryan or Dravidian? Why is it important for Indian society to be secular? When did communalism as an ideology gain a foothold in the country? How and when did our patriarchal mindset begin to support a culture of violence against women? Why are the fundamentalists so keen to rewrite history textbooks?The answers to these and similar questions have been disputed and argued about ever since they were first posed. Distinguished historian Romila Thapar has investigated, analyzed and interpreted the history that underlies such questions throughout her career; now, in this book, through a series of incisive essays she argues that it is of critical importance for the past to be carefully and rigorously explained, if the legitimacy of our present, wherever it derives from the past, is to be portrayed as accurately as possible.

Portrait of a Serial Killer is an unforgettable celebration of India and Indians by one of our most beloved writers.Published on the hundredth anniversary of Khushwant Singh's birth, none of the essays in this collection has been published in book form before. A chilling account of the serial killer Raman Raghav rubs shoulders with an extraordinary portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru followed by an exuberant encounter with Dev Anand, as well as nearly twenty other profiles of saints, charlatans, writ

Degree Coffee By the Yard: A Short Biography of Madras brings forth the rich history of the city of Madras before it was on its way to becoming Chennai. Nirmala Lakshman has done a wondrous task of painting a culturally affluent and worthy image of the coastal city of India. Madras had many things to offer to the people and with an extensive historical background replete with freedom fighters, British traders vying for its resourceful land, luminaries and rogues, political leaders and many other

This Unquiet Land is a peep into the complexities about India as a nation on the move. Based on the author's real life experiences, from a time when she was a reporter on the field, to the behind the scene deals in the highest power circles, the book is a compelling read for anybody interested in India and its problems.The book also covers the impact TV has had on the masses and how news on TV makes such a big impact in the long run. Having a ringside view of some of the most gruesome incident

Ruskin Bond's writing brings the world to us in profound and remarkable ways. His signature style is simplicity itself, but the themes he tackles are big, deep and universal-love, loss, happiness, grief, and all the shades of emotion in between. These are stories of city and small town, mountain and lowland, and of life lived slowly and lightly. For over fifty years, these tales have charmed and beguiled several generations of readers. Last year, Ruskin Bond made a selection of his favourite sto

India is battling an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Half of the country'sStandard 5 students cannot read a Standard 2 level text in their native language. Seventy-sixper cent of Indian students don't make it to college.

An Indian politician looks back at her journey and recounts how the going got tougher with her every success, perhaps because she was a woman.Life among the Scorpions recounts the deeply fascinating and often tumultuous events that mark thirty years of Jaya Jaitly's political journey.From arranging relief for victims of the 1984 Sikh riots, to joining politics under firebrand leader George Fernandes, to becoming the president of Samata Party-a key ally in the erstwhile NDA Government, Jaitly's

In Abolishing the Death Penalty: Why India Should Say No to Capital Punishment, Gopalkrishna Gandhi asks fundamental questions about the ultimate legal punishment awarded to those accused of major crimes. Is taking another life a just punishment or an act as inhuman as the crime that triggered it? Does having capital punishment in the law books deter crime? His conclusions are unequivocal: Cruel in its operation, ineffectual as deterrence, unequal in its application in an uneven society, liable

The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will remain covered with dense clouds as long as there is Krishna in Braj.These lines were composed by Mohsin Kakorvi, a Muslim poet, to celebrate not Lord Krishna's birthday but that of the Prophet Muhammad. Awadh, the author's birthplace, was steeped in this sort of syncretism in which Islam and Hinduism complemented and celebrated each other and Urdu culture merged with Awadhi and Brajbhasha. Sadly, this glorious culture ha

Extraordinary Indians is a collection of profiles of fifty eminent Indians (and one Pakistani) from a variety of backgrounds and professions. Published on the seventieth anniversary of India's independence, it is intended to provide the reader with a glimpse of the kind of people who have made this country great.Over the course of a long and prolific career, Khushwant Singh met and wrote about hundreds of people. The people in this book are those he admired deeply for their integrity, talent, g

What is true nationalism? What is pseudo-nationalism? What is anti-national? What is patriotism? Is the shouting of nationalist slogans important to prove one's patriotism? Why is Bharat Mata ki Jai so important to the right wing? Why does the law of sedition continue to exist on the statute book of an independent country? Who should the sedition law be used against? Why is cultural freedom important to a nation? What sort of India do we want? What sort of Indians do we want to be? What sort of

The idea of heroism in women is not easily defined. In men the notion is often associated with physical strength and extravagant bravery. Women's heroism has tended to be of a very different nature, less easily categorized. All the women portrayed-Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara, Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal-share an unassailable belief in a cause, for which they are willing to fightto the death if need be. In every case this belief leads them to confrontation with a horrified patriarchy.In the book we meet lotus-eyed, dark-skinned Draupadi, dharma queen, whose story emerges almost three millennia ago; the goddess Radha who sacrificed societal respectability for a love that transgressed convention; Ambapali, a courtesan, who stepped out of the luxurious trappings of Vaishali to follow the Buddha and wrote a single, haunting poem on the evanescence of beauty and youth.

For thousands of years, the Indian subcontinent has proved a fertile ground for the world's most captivating erotic love poetry, and the genius of its devotional writing harnesses great energy and mystical insight. It is in fact often hard to tell whether the poets are offering poems of spiritual longing using the garments of love poetry or writing erotic pieces in the guise of devotion. Perhaps, in a land where erotic sculptures routinely ornament its many temples and gods are known for their explosive sexuality, this question has little meaning to these remarkable writers. In their devotional traditions, eroticism and mysticism seem inseparable.This collection spans 2,500 years and includes work originally sung or recited by well-known bards: Kabir, Mirabai, Lal Ded, Vidyapati and Tagore. There are also poems from the Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit poetry and Punjabi folk lyrics. The poets have largely emerged from the ranks of the dispossessed: leather workers, refuse collectors, maidservants, women and orphans. Their vision is of a democratic society in which all voices count. Often they faced persecution for speaking candidly, or daring to speak of spiritual matters at all. The notes include profiles of these legendary lives. Several of these poets simply vanished, absorbed into a deity, or disappeared in a flash of purple lightning. A few produced miracles-most of them are surrounded by clouds of mystery. Andrew Schelling has drawn on the work of twenty-four translators, including A. K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Deben Bhattacharya, Dilip Chitre, Gieve Patel, Ezra Pound and Robert Bly to build the finest anthology of India's erotic and spiritual poetry ever assembled for the general reader.

Mihir has followed Indian cricket since his school days in Mumbai and The Nine Waves in his own style will bring out the subtleties and the nuances, pulls and pressures, theculture and colour, the politics and the people that make Indian cricket different from othercountries

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The sounds and flavours of the land south of the Vindhyas-temple bells, coffee and jasmine,coconut and tamarind, delicious dosais and appams-are familiar to many, but its historyis relatively unknown. In this monumental study, the first in over fifty years, historian andbiographer Rajmohan Gandhi brings us the South Indian story in modern times. At heart, thestory he tells is one of four powerful cultures-Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu; aswell as the cultures that have influenced them-Kodava, Konkani, Marathi, Oriya, Tulu andindigenous.When the narrative begins at the end of the sixteenth century, the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur,Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar have combined to defeat the kingdom of Vijayanagara, oneof the last great medieval empires of the South. After the fall of Vijayanagara, less powerfulnayakas or sultans ruled the region. Competition raged between these rulers and the manyEuropean trading companies. By the seventeenth century, only the French and Britishremained to fight it out, in association with Indian rulers and princely states.

''What the Harmandir means to devotees can best be witnessed near the main entrance of the temple. Parties of pilgrims approach, merrily chatting and quarrelling amongst themselves. Suddenly, the golden dome of the temple, rising above the sparkling blue waters of the surrounding pool, hoves into view. They fall silent as if spellbound. Palms are joined in prayer; some are overcome with emotion and tears flow down their cheeks. ''hey prostrate themselves on the ground and murmur their thanks.''

The question of which of us is Aryan is one of the most contentious in India today. In this eyeopeningbook, scholars and experts critically examine the Aryan issue by analysing history,genetics, early Vedic scriptures, archaeology and linguistics to test and challenge varioushypotheses, myths, facts and theories that are currently in vogue.Romila Thapar tackles the definition of the 'Aryan' in her inimitable style by tracing theorigins and progression of the 'Aryans' from old Iranian texts such as the Zend-Avesta,archaeological excavations and colonial interpretations made by Max Müeller. She alsotouches upon the following fields of enquiry: historiography, archaeology, linguistics,comparative mythology, social anthropology and, more recently, genetics. Michael Witzelinvestigates the origins of the early 'Aryans' within and outside India. Jaya Menon examinesdata from excavations of Harappan culture. Kai Friese lucidly explains the Rakhigarhiresearch which has been talked about a lot in the recent past and Razib Khan providesinsights arising from research into genetics.

Unhurried Tales: My Favourite Novellas brings together, for the very first time, Ruskin Bond's favourite (and finest) novellas. The stories in this book include Time Stops at Shamli (written in 1956 and published for the first time in 1987); The Blue Umbrella, which has been a bestseller for the last forty years; Angry River, which was a longer work when it was first written; Bus Stop, Pipalnagar; Night of the Leopard; The Last Tiger and Tales of Fosterganj, his latest novella, which was published in 2013. These stories speak of a world that has long vanished, but it is a world that has lost none of its power to enchant. Whether we are accompanying Sita on her perilous journey down the angry river or Bisnu as he gets the better of a dangerous leopard, whether we delight in Binya's joy at owning her blue umbrella or are saddened by the fate of the last tiger.

Lucknow's famous Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb-a melding together of influences-is seen in its art, architecture, dance and music. But nowhere is this tehzeeb better represented than in its food, redolent with the tastes of Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan, and infused with the flavours of Sindhi, Parsi, Punjabi, Nawabi, Mughlai and British food.When Sunita Kohli's parents, Chand and Inder Prakash Sur, first settled in Lucknow after having to leave Lahore following Partition, they brought with them only the memories of home. In The Lucknow Cookbook Sunita Kohli and Chand Sur bring together the taste and smells of home in these 150 well-loved dishes from their kitchens and from the kitchens of family and friends. These delectable kebabs and soups, biryanis, pulaos and raitas, mutton, chicken and fish dishes, paranthas and rotis, vegetables, sweets and puddings, cocktail snacks, chutneys and pickles are a taste of the fabled Lucknowi tradition of hospitality.A celebration of the tehzeeb of Lucknow as well as its nazaakat (elegance) the book is also a portrait of the city and its storied history.

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Corruption in India today is pervasive, omnipresent, and diverse, covering every branch of the Indian state and key sectors of the economy. Far from declining and fading away, as predicted, with deregulation and liberalization, it has increased exponentially in the twenty-first century at all levels-central, state, and local. It can be seen today as a normal, not a pathological, condition within the political economy. In several states, corruption involving politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen,

Nearly one in every twelve humans is a young Indian for whom meaningful education is of critical importance. A good education will not only help our youth get jobs and build fulfilling careers, it will also lead to the widening of our collective imagination and the shaping of the way we think; for all these reasons it ought to be an important concern of our time.Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a lack of infrastructure, adequate funding and genuine autonomy within educational institutions, departments within those institutions, and individuals who teach in those departments. And this is not all. There is also the question of the nature of knowledge that is relevant to our rapidly modernizing country that needs to be dealt with.If knowledge is the core of education and if education lays the very foundation of a nation, the author argues that it is of critical importance that the plight of educational institutions and the need to generate knowledge appropriate to India are addressed without any delay.Original and profound, this book offers a clear picture of the mistakes that have been committed in the past, confronts the present decline of knowledge and education in the country and offers a vision for the future.